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Tuesday, May 31, 2011

The lupines are in bloom at Great Brook State Park and they are gorgeous. I've been struggling this last week, with lots of wipers to my credit. On this one, I wiped off the whole bottom half of the painting and made a second try, which you see here. The bottom photo shows my approach on the second pass, to cover the grass and flower area with blocks of color giving the basic composition. Then I came back in with strokes of color on top, first with the lupines and then using the green to shape the negative space around them. In version one, too much of the orangey-yellow background was showing through.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

It was wonderful to be out this morning at Great Brook Farm painting this wonderful group of trees above the pond. There was a big bullfrog serenading me and hopefully getting his fill of the mosquitos that my bug dope scared away. I am so glad to see the sun!

Friday, May 20, 2011

black and white version of mixing the same value as yellow from the tube

I really enjoy doing value studies, whether in paint or as a sketch. I think it's a lot harder to translate those values into color though. Take a look at "Off the Rim" above. I was surprised to see the red bowl and blue background have almost the same value after I photoshopped the image of the painting into black and white. In the color version, the blue seems much lighter to me. So I decided to try and improve my ability to see the values in patches of color with the above exercise. Give it a try and see if you find it as challenging as I did: paint a swatch of cad yellow straight from the tube. Then try and mix a gray, red, and blue to match the value of the yellow. It took me a couple of tries to get the red and blue light enough (above is my second try). I've added a value finder to each image above to make it easier to see.

Monday, May 16, 2011

I had a great time last week at the local apple orchards, in the few moments of sunshine. This was my second effort, not sure if I can save the first. We'll see. Thanks to Bob and Joelle for the wonderful scenery.

Friday, May 6, 2011

My demo in progress showing simplification of the photo and using negative space to shape the background trees

Student landscapes from photos, where the goal was cropping, simplification, and use of negative space

Student pears painted over previous day's value study

The second day of our workshop at River Arts, we painted over a value study of pears in yellow ochre from the previous day (see Lisa's beautiful version in the bottom photo). Then we moved on to painting from a photo, on an orange acrylic ground. The goals were to crop the photos, simplify, and use negative space to shape objects. I was impressed with the results!

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

We had a great workshop this weekend at River Arts. The students wanted to learn to be looser and more painterly, and I know that daily painting, fast and small, can help with that. One of my favorite exercises is the succession of 10 minute paintings. I've done apples and pears in the past. These ladies choose apples, and did really well. Thanks to Carol Marine, for introducing me to this exercise.